Page 2730 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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in the Road Traffic Act of 1974, subsection 70(vi); and in the Northern Territory, in the Traffic Act of 1987, paragraph 21(a). Accordingly, this provision in this Bill is perfectly in keeping with those of the rest of the legislatures of Australia, and I can see no reason to have this clause deleted.
MR MOORE (3.57): How eloquently put by Mr Duby! There is no point in my going over the material that he has just presented. My concerns were similar to those of Mr Stefaniak. I spent some time talking to representatives of the Insurance Council of Australia Ltd, the NRMA, Tony De Domenico and a number of other people when this Bill was originally presented, and I shared those concerns. I then went further to speak to the Civil Liberties Council and, through it, the Law Society of the ACT, and I was reassured of the points that Mr Duby has made. Having been reassured, I will support the retention of this particular clause in the Bill.
MR COLLAERY (3.58): Mr Speaker, the Residents Rally endorses Mr Duby's points and those of Mr Moore. We went through the same traverse as Mr Moore, speaking to the various parties, including representatives of the insurance industry. The difficulties the insurance industry currently has will not, in our view, be in any way substantially changed by this piece of legislation.
Mr Speaker, the Rally is conscious of the privacy issues involved generally, but it is also conscious that the new Federal privacy law has created some anomalous situations. I believe that in this Territory we will be working through those in the next few months. But, in the meantime, it does appear that the remedy lies outside the Motor Traffic Act. Access to information relating to traffic offenders can be provided for by other means and other forms of legislation. It is proper that evidence that is secured under compulsory requirement provisions, particularly where there are unconscious people involved, should not be able to be used as the deciding factor in a civil contractual issue.
I hasten to say that, in my experience, in personal injuries and other motor traffic litigation the vast majority of motor traffic insurance companies are very humane and very reasonable, particularly those based in the Territory. There have been one or two exceptions in my experience over the years, but essentially one does appreciate the problems of proof that insurers have sometimes when there has been a single-vehicle accident on a country road.
But surely the answer to their problems is in the drawing of their civil contracts and ensuring that the contractual relationship they have with drivers and the declarations of prior driving records and the like are fully and adequately traversed in the making of the insurance contract. It has often struck me that in motor traffic insurance very little
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